Voices

What does it mean to say that someone sounds Gay? What does it mean to say that somebody sounds Black? Or to say that someone sounds ‘educated,’ ‘southern,’ ‘woke,’ ‘like the kids these days,’ or ‘not from around here,’ and so on. In answering these questions, we’ll examine the specific linguistic properties that get used (often unconsciously) to encode social signals and the ways that those same properties are perceived (also often unconsciously) to inform our social judgments. At the same time, we'll examine the rhetoric and terminology used in media and everyday conversation to characterize other people's dialects and voices along with all the ways this usually diverges from linguistic reality.

Each week, we'll cover one ‘voice’ (e.g. accent, dialect, social group, etc.) and read about its linguistic characteristics along with the ways those characteristics influence our social judgements. We'll also examine the ways that particular voice is portrayed, discussed, or criticized in popular media. Students will write short essays (500-800 words) each week and grades will be based on those essays as well as participation in class and canvas discussion threads.